


Drabble Collection: Roleplay Bits and Starters

by nerdqueenmari



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Gen, basically just a whole bunch of stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-11-20 18:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 4,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11340813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdqueenmari/pseuds/nerdqueenmari
Summary: A collection of short drabbles, posts, and starters from roleplaying that I think stand well enough on their own and want to share. Length and content may vary greatly between "chapters".





	1. Flower Language [Jack and Margaret]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret leaves Jack a little reminder after he crashed at her house. (The prompt was "your character picks a flower for mine".)

Meg had already left for work by the time Jack woke up, but she had left breakfast in the guest bedroom he had slept in last night. The previous night, though parts of it were likely still a blur, had been spent on Margaret’s kitchen floor, draining between them three bottles of her good wine. It was the only thing she could think of to try to cheer Jack after he’d arrived on her doorstep looking worse than she’d ever seen him, bringing with him a story about how he’d been mutinied and marooned.

After hours of drunken reminiscing about their days sailing together, Jack had finally stumbled up to the guest room and passed out there. When morning came, Margaret hadn’t wanted to wake him, so she’d left the tray with breakfast on it. Next to the plate, though, there was a single, flawless fuchsia azalea, and a little scrap of paper with a hastily written note.

_ Take care of yourself. _


	2. The Boot Thing [Hector and Margaret]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret tries unsuccessfully to stop Hector from leaving again. Technically unfinished.

“What did you do with my other boot this time?”

Margaret turned from her vanity, where she had been searching through a small jewelry box, to look across the bedroom with the most innocent face she could muster. “What’s that?”

The man sitting on the edge of her bed shot her an irritated look, which she ignored to begin brushing her hair. “My other boot. Where is it?”

“I’ve no idea,” she answered. She twisted a curl of hair in her fingers and studied the effect in the mirror. “Did you check by the door?”

He got up and strode to stand behind her. She lifted her eyes to meet his in the mirror, her face perfectly clear. “Margaret.”

“Hector.”

He placed one long finger on her forehead and tipped her head back to look up at him. “My boot. I’ll leave whether I have it or not, but I’d much prefer the have.”

She whirled off the little vanity bench and stood before him. She was frowning - it was really a shame to see that expression on her pretty face. “I don't want you to go,” she challenged. Her head only reached up to his chin, but her face was the kind of determined one was ill-advised to argue with.

Hector gave a frustrated sigh. “You never do.”

“Should I?” Her green eyes flashed with a spark of anger. “Maybe you could decide you don’t want to break my heart today.”

“Meg.” His hand found its way to her cheek. “Don’t do this again.”

“I’m not doing anything.” She tore away from him and headed for the closet. “You’re the one leaving. I’ve no choice in the matter, so I can’t do anything. So I’m not.”

He stood there for a minute, staring after her with a conflicted look flickering across his weathered features. “My boot.” It landed with a loud thud in the middle of the floor as she pitched it towards him. He snatched the shoe up and threw himself onto the vanity bench to put it on.

“Hector.”

He straightened the boots and stood. That tone was not one he wanted to deal with. This was far from the first time he and Margaret had had this exchange, and frankly, he liked it no better now than he had the first time. She knew damn well he wasn’t going to stay, no matter what she said.

“Hector,” she said again. “I’m pregnant.”

Hector Barbossa could not think of a single other time he had been at a loss for words. It was, in fact, a particular identifying characteristic that he was the sort of man who was never short the thing to say. This took him by surprise, though. Margaret was standing in front of the closet, staring into its depths, her back to him. He couldn’t see her expression, but he knew she was waiting for him to speak, likely trying not to chew her bottom lip as she did when she was nervous. There were a thousand thoughts racing through his mind, but not a single one would settle down.

Margaret turned. “Did you hear me?”

Of course he had - and she knew that, it was strictly a rhetorical question.

“Aye,” he said finally.


	3. Subtext [Hector and Margaret]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little lesson in word choice.

She’d never been an easy sleeper, but with Hector gone, it was worse. She had gotten used to his presence in her bed, to falling asleep with her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It was little comfort that the sheets still smelled like him when she didn’t know how long he’d be gone.

That ache for more had come back with a vengeance. She began to hate being inside, with the noise and the people and the still, hot air that smelled like stale drunks no matter what she did. Insomniac, she found herself wandering down to the beach in her nightgown most midnights. She was well aware that casually strolling through the back alleys by herself in the middle of the night was not a good idea, but she couldn’t stand to lay in bed alone, not when she could go down to watch the waves roll in and wonder if he was out on that vast sea somewhere thinking about her, too.

_ Of course he is _ , she told herself, but the little tingle of doubt was still there no matter how hard she tried to shake it. This was how it was when your lover was a sailor, she knew. She had just never expected his absence to affect her so. She was used to seeing her friends infrequently - that was the nature of living in a thriving port town and working in a tavern frequented by pirates - but never had she so keenly felt the loss of anyone’s company.

It was absurd, really. She wasn’t some fawning girl in love for the first time - or at least that’s what she tried to believe. Belief was hard when she was standing with her toes digging into the wet sand, staring up at the night sky, trying to hear his voice from the last night they had been together.

“I’ll wait for you,” she’d said. What she meant was “I love you.” “As long as you come back.”

“I’ll come back,” he had said, but he meant “I love you”.


	4. "Plenty of Ports," He Said [Hector and Margaret]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, when the Boot Thing didn't work...

She knows he’s leaving, and she steadfastly refuses to care. Any other time, she’d be sure to see him off with a smile, but no, not this time. This time, she is hiding in the kitchen at the Dog and the Duchess, angrily washing dishes and remembering what he said before storming out of the house that morning.

“Plenty of ports in the world.”

All she can think is that she will be _damned_ if she caves first. They have had this argument a hundred times, and ninety nine of those times, she has given up fighting and tearfully made him promise he won’t stay away too long. This time, she’s sick of losing. She’s sick of being a pushover. She complains, but she never actually stops him from leaving, and she’s sick of the sour taste in her mouth about it. She’s tired of being a temporary part of his life, and she told him that earlier. “Everything is temporary”, huh? To hell with him, she’s resolved. To hell with Hector Barbossa. She’s not going through it again.

She wipes her hands on her apron and goes for the door, but stops when she realizes he’s standing in the doorway. Because _of course_ he is, she thinks with relief. Her breath catches in her throat, and she’s reminded once again how much she loves this coarse, infuriating man. She refuses to let him get the better of her, however, so she gives him an angry look and turns away to go back to her dishes.

She doesn’t even say anything to him - she can’t. She’s certain that if she does, it will come out as “I love you”.


	5. A Love Letter [Margaret to Hector]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick letter to an absent lover.

Hector,

You’ve been gone two weeks. As promised, this is only the second time I’ve sat down to write you since you left. I have not been “moping about” for the loss of you as you accused the last time I saw you. I have felt your absence - in the sound of the waves, in the feel of the wind in my hair, in the sight of the sky at night. But I assure you, I am not brooding. Nor am I sad, despondent, melancholy, or, as you so eloquently suggested in the past, weeping for your return.

I do miss you.

Love,  
Meg


	6. Drowning Her Feelings [Margaret]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret was asked, while drunk, to say something about Hector.

_Oh, Hector._ She knows it wasn’t easy, the idea of facing everything without her, she doesn’t blame him for doing what he thought he had to at the time ~~no matter how OUT OF HIS HEAD he must have been~~ and look, Carina is such a strong—

 _Nope._  
I’m mad.  
How dare you turn around and die before I even have the chance to –

to recall the fact that she left first  
that she’s the one who didn’t say goodbye first  
that she knows he had to carry that around for the last twenty years and he’d been carrying so much baggage already when they met and how. much. that must have h u r t.

_And you always said you didn’t think this was real when when we were together, because it was all too perfect, well, maybe you were right. maybe it was a dream, that we were happy for that. far, far too brief time. I just. dreamed the whole thing._

She’s just…sorry. sorry she abandoned them, sorry she never told him everything she wanted for them, sorry she missed the chance to teach her daughter how to read the sky, sorry she could have thought for a brief second that anything was more important than them.  
but… she’s happy, too?

 _Fitting. The only death I’d forgive you for_ would _be the one where you died to protect our daughter._

If there’s a bar in the afterlife, she’s saving a drink for him.


	7. Oops [Elizabeth and Barbossa]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth gets a little too good with her sword while learning to be a pirate.

It irritates her that she’s worried.

She’s been here for weeks now, and she’s still not ready to regard the pirates she’s surrounded by as friends. She still thinks they’re filthy - though who is she to pass judgment when she hasn’t had an _actual_ bath in longer than she prefers to recall? They’re also still largely rather dimwitted, but that point requires more than some soap to fix.

They’re friendly, though. She doesn’t think of them as friends, but she is _friendly_ in return. They’ve taught her a lot since she came to realize she was making no headway fighting her situation. Since she’s accepted that, at least for the time being, she’s a pirate.

But she’s still not ready to call them friends, especially not their sardonic rogue of a captain. That’s why she’s so angry that she’s concerned. Barbossa doesn’t need her worry, and she doesn’t want to give him the consideration.

She doesn’t want it, but she does anyway. She can’t help it. The strike she made at him when they were practicing with swords was a hard one. She was told not to hold back, so of course, she didn’t (not that she was inclined to anyway), and he tripped, giving her all the opportunity she needed to nearly take off his hand. Luckily, her thrust was aimed at where he was prior to the indignity of having foot trouble, and instead, the blade only grazed some skin from his knuckles. The blood was profuse, but now that it’s cleaned away, it looks like he’ll be fine.

She’s standing sheepishly nearby as he bandages his hand, trying very much to look like she doesn’t really care. Finally, she can’t take it, and she opens her mouth (her usual surefire way to make a wonderful impression). “Does it hurt?”


	8. The Three Year Mark (Elizabeth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth almost loses it completely.

She can’t take it anymore. Three years and nine months, she has been alone. Three years, she has been alone with Henry. He was a calm baby, but then as soon as he could toddle around, he became Trouble. There’s nothing Elizabeth can do but watch him like a hawk every second of the day, and she cannot take it anymore.

She’s been struck, after chasing Henry around the house and finally getting him into bed, with the realization of how long she’s been alone. How long it’s been since Will left. How much he’s missed. How long it will be before she sees him again. How short that visit will seem in comparison to the eternity that she’s spent missing him.

She’s overcome, and she doubles over with her hand against the wall to keep her balance, trying to swallow the pain in her belly and the bitter, angry tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Some days, she thinks maybe it would be easier if Jack had let Will die. Not better, but easier. She would have grieved, and she would have recovered, and she would have remembered him fondly and sadly while she lived her life. Instead she’s here, alone in this huge house with a fatherless boy and a husbandless bed.

The tears roll down her face, but she is too hard and too proud to let herself sob. She is a King, and Kings are made of sterner stuff. She holds the sobs back like a little ball of ice in her heart. Never again will she cry over this, she had resolved that day she said farewell to Will on the beach. She’s not crying, not really, but the tears are there anyway.


	9. The Night Before (Elizabeth & Hector)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wine leads to lines being crossed.

She worries that breathing will break the spell, so she remains, frozen, trying to decide her next move. All she wants to do is enjoy the moment. Elizabeth has had few calm moments since leaving Port Royal to rescue Will all those years ago, and she doesn’t want to interrupt this one, however unusual it is.

She’s not sure how much time has passed when she begins to gently disengage herself from Barbossa, and she doesn’t want to think about it. They’ve been having a good evening, reflecting on the journey to Singapore with drink that hasn’t exactly been spare. It was cheerful, a little fun, the camaraderie easy and comfortable.

Until she reached for the bottle of wine to refill her glass, and she overbalanced, and then in a second, his hands were around her waist, and she was being pulled into his lap before she had the chance to hit the table face first. The transition, the change in the tone of their meeting, had been instantaneous. She had her arm slung over his shoulder, he was still holding onto her, and neither one of them seemed to be breathing, or even living at all. The stillness, the silence of the moment, is oppressively heavy until she begins to get up.

Her heart isn’t in it, though. She wants to stay there, feeling her heart pound with an excitement she hasn’t felt in years - and rarely without the threat of danger right around the corner. This is still dangerou, but it’s a different thrill from living on a knife’s edge. This danger is quieter, sneakier, more passive - it has crept in without her realizing it. She sees it in his eyes, the tacit agreement that they shouldn’t be here.

And she decides suddenly that she doesn’t care. She leans in, before she can question herself, and kisses him. 


	10. I Need to Stop Posting Ship Memes (Elizabeth & Hector)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elizabeth laid a trap that paid off. I'm shipping trash leave me alone

He’s still there.

Elizabeth rolls over to hide her face in a pillow, so she doesn’t have to worry about her face betraying her triumphant smirk. He looks asleep - but she doesn’t trust that, she knows him too well - and she’s not sure how the morning will find him. He might be hot today, and wake content to just lie quietly in each other’s arms for a while, satisfied with last night - or he might run cold, and storm to get something to eat and make a big (noisy) fuss of ignoring her.

There really is just no telling what mood might strike him when he wakes to find they’re married, after so long of carefully sidestepping her copious hints. Elizabeth might be an unconventional woman in many ways, but she does still believe in marriage, and she won’t pretend she’s not rather pleased that her introduction of far too much to drink into the situation did the trick. It’s nice, to lie here, finally able to put a name on it; wed.

Entirely worth the hangover, she resolves, rolling over to face his still form. She’s relatively confident that, whatever his immediate reaction is, however drunk he was last night when she goaded him into a commitment, he will eventually get over his upset and accept it, and everything will go back to normal except that she’s no longer “Miss Swann”, and never will be again. At least… she keeps trying to tell herself that he will. Confident is perhaps an exaggeration. “Cautiously hopeful and possibly ready to play the ‘oh goodness the sheet just slipped down’ card” might be more accurate.


	11. The Smell of Home [Margaret & Hector]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret ruminates after being rescued from a shipwreck by pirates.

She was convinced she’d be on that stupid island for the rest of her too-short life. To see sails on the horizon was less “relief” and more “the lifting of three days convinced she was going to die here from here shoulders”.

Margaret glances up at her savior, thinking that that’s a strange word to be using. She’d been so relieved when he and his crew arrived on the beach that she’d thrown her arms around him quite indecently. She’s still embarrassed, and she suspects that her reaction will not soon be forgotten by anyone.

Captain Barbossa, he eventually introduced himself. He made no comment on the hug, just offered her his coat to cover her lack of proper dress around a bunch of dirty men. She’s huddled into it now, her head swirling with dehydration and exhaustion. The coat smells like something she hasn’t smelled since childhood, and she’s sent back momentarily. Her father’s coat had that scent. When he died, she’d insisted on having it, and she’d spent night after night curled up in bed, wrapped in the garment. That smell is home, it’s comfort, it’s safety. It’s so poignant a thought that she doesn’t realize she’s lifted the sleeve to her face and is smelling it, not entirely inconspicuously.

She flushes - how can her body have the energy to  _ bother _ at a time like this? - and stares down at her feet, avoiding the eye contact that will leave her too ashamed to live.


	12. The Book Thing [Margaret & Hector]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaret tries to get back into Hector's good graces.

“Hector.” She slides onto the bed next to him and puts a hand on his arm. He doesn’t acknowledge, meaning he’s still mad at her for earlier. He glares down at the book in his lap like the thing has given him a personal slight.

She draws closer, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Hector,” she breathes against his ear. He continues to ignore her, although there’s a little flinch away. She moves towards him, running her hands down his front. She catches the brief Look he shoots her with a smile, because that means she’s likely to win this round.

He still tries to concentrate on the book, pointedly disregarding her series of soft kisses down his jaw. She puts her hand over the open pages of the book, and carefully, bit by bit, pulls it from his hands. She tosses a leg over his lap to straddle him, while letting the book fall on the end of the bed behind her. There’s a moment when she almost thinks he’ll push her off and try to snatch the book back, but her gamble pays off; he leans forward to kiss her. 

She slides her arms over his shoulders, pressing her lips back against his and only just managing not to grin like a fool.

“You’ll be the death of me,” he laments, drawing her in with an arm around her waist.

“You’re not allowed to die. I forbid it.”


	13. The Whiskey-Drenched Morning After [Margaret & Hector]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An argument escalates again, but this time to new heights.

What in holy Hell was she thinking? Margaret is pulling herself through the fog of a truly massive hangover, hoping she can figure out some legitimate reason for why she’s waking up today as Mrs. Barbossa - like that isn’t the silliest thing she’s ever been called in her life.

Reflection on the previous night is painful, but necessary. She was at work, he was hanging around at the end of the bar, waiting until close. They got into a spat about something - it didn’t matter what, it was almost certainly bullshit on both sides - and damn Ed Carson, he had the audacity to suggest they bickered like a married couple.

The resulting double-pronged verbal flogging of poor Mister Carson summarily sent everyone else home, including, with a mumbled apology, Ed. That left them alone, glaring after him, and Margaret decided perhaps it was time to go home and let Anne close up shop.

“The nerve,” she muttered, while Hector nodded in agreement. Still stung from the course of their interrupted disagreement, she made a very poor decision just then. It was the kind of thing she absolutely knew would end badly, but she was pissed and wanted the last word. In her defense, she was also twelve hours into her stint at the Duchess today, and the last forty minutes or so of that had been spent at the end of the bar bickering with Hector and taking shots from a shared bottle of whiskey.

“Besides, it’s not as though you’re the marrying kind, anyway.”

"Oh,  _ be that so _ . Because you happen to know so very much about me, do you? Can predict me every move and whim, can you? And tell me, then,  _ Miss Smyth _ , how it feels to know you're  _ oh so very wrong _ in that assessment," he’d snapped back, and then it just went to Hell in a whiskey-drenched handbasket when she issued the challenge: “Prove it, then, or I shan’t believe you.”

Minister Lawrence wasn’t happy to see them at nearly midnight, demanding nuptials be performed, but he  _ was _ thrilled at the idea of no longer having to pray so vehemently for poor Miss Smyth’s immortal soul due to her no longer having extramarital  _ relations _ . The night ended, as they strolled away from the minister’s house later, in an argument. Another, which, as they did so often, came to a crescendo on her doorstep, before fading away a night no different than any other they spent together. Save for the fact that he’d proven her absolutely wrong about being the marrying kind.

She opens her mouth now, thinking that one of them is going to have to break the silence, so it might as well be sooner rather than later. “Morning,” she says neutrally. She has absolutely no idea where this morning will find his mood.


	14. He'll Be Back [Margaret & Hector]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Falling in love is hard and no one understands.

She isn’t used to missing people like this. Sure, she has moments when she thinks of friend’s she’d like to talk, or how long it’s been since she saw her brother, but this is different. This is a palpable ache that actually, physically,  _ hurts _ . She has never, in her life, missed someone and thought that she isn’t sure sure could bear not to see them again.

_ He’ll be back _ , she reminds herself as she goes about her day. That’s enough to get her through most of it, but the nights… The nights are hard. She’s reminded, when she rolls around in the too-big bed she insisted on getting because she was sick of waking up with elbows and/or whiskers in her face, that having a bed to herself has bother bothered her before. But now? She hates it. She slept in the center of the the old mattress. She used to spread out and revel in the fact that the space was all hers. Now, she sleeps on one side, leaving the other side empty like he might walk in any time, and it’s lonely, and she hates it, and she hates him for making her feel this way.

She hates him for how much she loves him. Amongst all her childhood fantasies about her future, being wed to a man she can’t even touch every single day was not particularly prominent. She thought love was supposed to be soft, comforting, something that carried you peacefully through the rough spots. That’s so wrong, she could very well laugh at the idea. Love is hard, she knows now. Love grabs you and holds onto you like a vice. It cuts like a knife, burrows under your skin like a shard of glass, waiting for the moment to strike.

In her case, after nearly four decades of avoiding romantic entanglements, this seems to be  _ the moment _ . She is now learning firsthand what it’s like to fall so hard and so fast that she can’t breathe. Thinking of him does this to her, and it’s  _ baffling _ . She has gone, overnight it seems, from being  _ just her _ to  _ her _ but with a piece missing. She hates to think that part of herself could live in someone else, because it’s just so cliche, but it’s a rather accurate description of how she’s feeling nonetheless.

The only comfort she can glean from this mess is that she can think, quite easily, that he’s feeling the same. That he, too, is apart from her, and feeling it, and in love, and feeling that, and missing her touch as much as she will (grudgingly) admit she misses his, and in that regard, feeling nothing but the air. There is a little perverse joy in that, because it’s retribution for stoking this kind of fire within her, for which she’ll never forgive him. It’s also, nice, though. Honestly, it’s just comforting to think that there are feelings she shares with only one other person. Like they have a little secret between them when, of course, their relationship must honestly be the worst-kept secret since before the fall of the Roman Empire.

The relationship itself isn’t really the secret, though. It’s the depth of feeling to which she’s allowed herself that is the secret. She probably can’t even put it in words if asked, so really it’s just as well that she has no desire to share the thought with anyone.

_ He’ll be back _ , she reminds herself as the days and then the weeks and then the months pass, and she  _ knows _ that he won’t break a promise (and he  _ promised _ he would see her again, and she  _ steadfastly refuses _ to believe that it might only be on the other side that they’re to be reunited), but she’s still been counting days despite herself.  _ He will be back. _ She has to keep repeating it. If she says it enough, it will be true, after all - that’s how these things work.

She’ll tell him, when he comes back, maybe not in words, but in language she knows he’ll understand because  _ of course he will _ , that she loves him.


End file.
